


Liminal

by missyvortexdv (Purpleyin), Purpleyin



Category: 4400
Genre: Angst, Gen, General
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-30
Updated: 2009-11-30
Packaged: 2017-10-04 00:44:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Purpleyin/pseuds/missyvortexdv, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Purpleyin/pseuds/Purpleyin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isabelle reevaluates her world view.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liminal

**Author's Note:**

> Betaread by fififolle
> 
> Spoilers: Up to S3 "The New World"

Salvation or damnation. What is the difference? Right from the moment she was conceived she was a miracle, the first 4400 baby. There were her parents as a perfect couple, surviving their ordeal of being ripped from their place in time, planted back with her. But she wasn't compensation for the child her mother missed, this wasn't a new start with a happy ending. Her mother is dead, because of her. Her father is inconsolable, because of her. They both loved her, and she thinks her father still does, too, but she brought nothing good to them despite that she has only ever wanted what is best for her parents.

She's read about morality, ethics. The best way she can describe herself was that she used to feel and see and think in black and white, what was good for her and her mother and what was not. Instead of that now she has multicolour, the full spectrum of the degrees of right and wrong, with so many opinions painting a picture that nothing can be clear; it all muddles together confusingly. All she has is what books tell her, what people say and how they react to each little thing she does. The only way to know is to learn, to go through experience after experience and decide in retrospect. She doesn't like that option because she has to be wrong often enough to tell what's right, but it's really the only way nowadays. There will never be certainty for her again, the world is too complex for that.

She remembers things being simpler before. She doesn't remember everything, perhaps she doesn't want to, because now her choices appear more ambiguous, when they were once solid to her. She did what was needed, she _knew_ what was needed. Now she isn't sure what to do because she isn't sure who she is, nor why she is. The one thing she knows is she hurt her parents, even though she never meant to. That she had no choice over it and she doesn't understand why. It's no more comforting to know no one else knows the answer either. No amount of reading can reveal the mysteries surrounding what happened. It could be better not to know for all she knows.

She wants to go back. She supposes her parents did, too, when they appeared out of nowhere. Life was simpler as a baby, or at least it seemed so. Maybe the only difference was before she didn't have the concept of making a mistake, doing wrong. All there was was what was wrong by her, bad for her.

Salvation or damnation. She wants to believe in Shawn - she hopes she gets to choose, and she hopes she knows which is which and what is right. She couldn't choose not to grow up, or to prevent the pain suffered because of it, there was no quick and sure fix, only risks too hard to take. But she is still here, even if her mother is not, and she can choose from now on, she can make things better if she wants to. She has to believe that or she can never make up for any of it.


End file.
